More on the Alt-Right

I have commented on the alt-right before (see, e.g., here, here, and here). It’s a phenomenon I still don’t understand completely, perhaps because so much of its (generalized) platform is indistinguishable from previous sub-conservative movements. Critics of the alt-right movement charge that it is linked to hyper-nationalism, white supremacism, neo-Nazism, and so on and so forth. Proponents of the alt-right claim that it is represents an authentic alternative to mainstream conservatism, particularly mainline Republican Party politics. Maybe. However, calls for stricter immigration controls and isolationism have been with the American conservative movement for a century or so now. If the alt-right differs in any noticeable way from mainline conservatism, it is with respect to certain economic issues such as free trade. Whereas the Republican Party has long championed free-trade accords and other liberal economic policies, the alt-right seems to favor protectionism as the best way forward.

Certain conservative and traditional Catholics (along with right-leaning Protestants and Orthodox) have started embracing the alt-right, either out of fear that Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party will sweep the upcoming elections or because they believe a “strong man” such as Donald Trump is the answer to America’s woes (maybe both). As I have pointed out before, the problem with this embrace—at least for Catholics—is that it cuts so clearly against the actual social teachings of the Church. Racism is not Catholic. Excessive anti-immigration policies are not Catholic. Nationalism, to the extent the nation is placed above God and His Church, is not Catholic. I could go on, but I think you get the point. So why are an increasing number of Catholics comfortable setting aside the Church’s teaching to jump on the alt-right bandwagon? Perhaps because American Catholics of all political stripes have been setting aside the Church’s social magisterium in exchange for political relevance for decades.

Make no mistake about it. “Alt-right Catholics” are not doing anything more egregious than “libertarian Catholics” or “socialist Catholics.” All of these various political “brands” of Catholicism have one essential thing in common: an unfettered willingness to replace doctrine with ideology. There is no small amount of irony on hand when various social-media forums explode with fights between “alt-right Catholics” and “socialist Catholics.” Neither are witnessing for the truth, nor upholding the social rights of Christ the King. Rather, they are chucking ideologically charged hand grenades at one another with no hope whatsoever of resolving the issues between them. There is no true appeal to divine or natural law; there is only a race to amplify various bromides in the hopes of drowning out the opposition. And when that doesn’t work? Both sides resort to childish tactics such as name calling and hyperbolic accusations.

When will the situation improve? I can’t say. Part of me believes things will get worse before they get better, though I am endeavoring to check my pessimism whenever possible. For the current election cycle, though, there’s not much hope left that a majority of American Catholics will arouse themselves from their respective ideological stupors in order to confront the hard truth that liberalism has no authentic place for Christ and His Church, and that the Catholic faithful—along with all orthodox Christians—are not welcome under a horizon dominated by relativism, indifferentism, and hedonism. Still, that won’t stop Catholics from trying to “get by,” to be “team players” with some secular ideology or another. There’s an old saying: Pride comes before the fall. Capitulation will come before ours.

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19 Comments

Evangelical OrthodoxyAugust 30, 2016

The trouble is, there isn’t really a group with political influence that Catholics and others who hold traditional Christian views can throw their support behind. It’s not like there’s a Christian distributivist party or anything like that. And if there was, America’s just not cut out to handle it.

Voting in this country is without exception a pragmatic judgment, not a true moral choice. People have to pick which political movement they think (to the best of their knowledge) will bring about a state of affairs most conducive to their ethics, as opposed to holding onto their vote until their ideal Philosopher-King runs for president.

In the past I’ve made the proposal that Catholics abstain from voting (at least for president) until a candidate somewhat acceptable to us comes forward, instead of running after whatever candidate we or some of us think is the least unacceptable. There are enough Catholic voters that if this were done on principle, it might force politicians to take some notice of our positions. I agree it’s not a very good idea, but I maintain that it’s worth trying in view of the absolutely deplorable results we’ve had with voting for the least evil candidate. What do you think of this suggestion?

This, btw, is a link to where I originally proposed this idea. Unfortunately, it does not give access to the full article.

At present, I am reading my way through the writings of one Mencius Moldbug, who is claimed as the father of the Alt-Right. While I fear that the Alt-Right, like many of the iterations of Marxism, is what happens when second rate minds get hold of a first rate philosophy, I still think that Moldbug has a point or two to make. So, at present, put me down with Mr. M. as a neo-reactionary, at least for now.

Nonethless, I believe that what $hillary has done in her recent speech has been to emulate LBJ and the other Democrats back in 1964, when they demonized Goldwater as an ‘evil debbil’, bad thinker, tarring him both with the brush of the KKK and the John Birch Society, even though the former originated as a Southern Democrat organization, and the latter actually had a point. $hillary, like LBJ and the others, are using the Alt-Right to say that her opposition is racist. It is most likely that our current ‘booboissie’ will take the bait. Sigh.

One reason you may be having trouble understanding the alt-right is because it’s an umbrella term for a variety of disparate beliefs whose only commonality is the complete rejection of the reigning liberal ordo and a resolve not to punch to the right, except on strictly right-wing terms. On a religious level, it includes atheists, neo-pagans, Catholic and Orthodox traditionalists, and some conservative protestants. Politically, it includes white nationalists, paleoconservatives, paleolibertarians, throne-and-altar reactionaries, neoreactionaries, Middle-American Radicals, internet trolls intent on freaking out the squares, and a fringe of LARPing NatSocs. In normal times you wouldn’t find these groups within a thousand miles of each other, but these are not normal times.

Is it an ideology? No. It’s a rejection of liberalism, but there’s no agreement on what should replace it. Most will contend that if other ethnic groups are encouraged to lobby for their own interests, whites should be allowed to do the same. All agree that civilizations built by Europeans tend to be safe, orderly, and characterized by a high level of altruism, and that this heritage is worth preserving. Most will agree that there is a startling concentration of Jews in societally destructive movements, and that Jews have often been openly hostile to Christendom.

Are some nationalist to the point of idolatry? Absolutely. Are some racist (whatever that is taken to mean)? By liberal standards, yes. By the standards of history, even relatively recent history? No. Do they believe that racial differences are empirically real and manifest themselves in a multiplicity of outcomes? Yes.

In other words, the alt-right is more a vehicle than an ideology. And if we had to choose the vehicle, it would be a large bus filled with men who seek to end liberal hegemony, with special disdain aimed at its promiscuous use of meaningless boo-words like “racist”, “sexist”, “homophobe”, “islamophobe”, and the like.

With respect to racism, I am referring to the standard dictionary definition: “the belief that all members of each race possess characteristics or abilities specific to that race, especially so as to distinguish it as inferior or superior to another race or races.”

I disagree that racism has the deep roots you posit, though I would agree that all one has to do is open up Herodotus to see that men have long recognized a diversity in culture, customs, norms, practices, religions, etc. among the peoples of the earth. The concept of race which is deployed today is no more than a few centuries old and came into conceptual being hand-in-hand with modernity. Two excellent discussions of this were penned many moons ago by Eric Voegelin: The History of the Race Idea and Race and State. While I fully agree that there are today different cultures, religions, historical patrimonies, etc. in play in the world and, moreover, that not all of them are by any means equal when judged by the light of reason and revelation, I reject the notion that someone from, say, Africa is “naturally inferior” to someone from, say, Norway or, for that matter, that the Norwegian is “naturally inferior” to the Japanese, and so forth. But do I have a problem saying that the Arab Christian civilization which was once dominant in the Middle East is superior to the gross barbarism and decrepit morality of the Arab Muslim civilization which conquered it? Absolutely not.

I think a more fundamental question is being missed here, namely, “Why are civilizations built by Europeans more likely to be safe, orderly, and characterized by a high level of altruism than others?” Is it because Europeans are “white” or is it because Europeans have been exposed to the truth of Christianity and its cultivation of classical learning and reason? As most know, I am half-Slavic and before the missionary efforts of Ss. Cyril and Methodius, my peoples were a bunch of animal-skin wearing, knuckle-dragging barbarians worshiping false gods and practicing all sorts of gross forms of immorality. The beautiful legacy of Slavic culture and civilization did not magically spring forth because they were the “right color”; it came because these people received the Gospel and the patrimony of the Church. And it is to the end of upholding that patrimony which I press for in any way I can in my daily life. I would encourage others to do the same and leave the political postures of the secularists to the dustbin of history.

” Is it because Europeans are “white” or is it because Europeans have been exposed to the truth of Christianity and its cultivation of classical learning and reason? As most know, I am half-Slavic and before the missionary efforts of Ss. Cyril and Methodius, my peoples were a bunch of animal-skin wearing, knuckle-dragging barbarians worshiping false gods and practicing all sorts of gross forms of immorality. The beautiful legacy of Slavic culture and civilization did not magically spring forth because they were the “right color”; it came because these people received the Gospel and the patrimony of the Church.”

This is precisely on of the reasons the racism of the alt-right, whether more overt a la Radix Journal or the more subtle like Vox Day and the apology at Maccabees Society, have struck a nerve with me is that, yeah, us Slavs, until recently were not the “right king of white” for various reasons.

As you probably know, in the early years of Rusyn and other Slavic immigration to North America they were seen as less white than the favourable Germanic stock. Even the Irish were “non-whites” by the metrics of the day (intelligence and cultural, which the more mainstream alt-right try to use as race identifiers).

I’d also be interested in some of the Galician Christian Nationalism you referenced later. Any books or articles you can recommend?

With respect to racism, I am referring to the standard dictionary definition: “the belief that all members of each race possess characteristics or abilities specific to that race, especially so as to distinguish it as inferior or superior to another race or races.”

Well, you’ll be pleased to know that I have encountered no-one in the alternative/dissident right who holds to this view. Nobody on the alt-right claims that any one race i) possesses characteristics or abilities specific to that race, let alone that ii) all members of that race do so.

On i), all races comprise human beings, and all human beings share the same broad characteristics and abilities, though distributed unevenly both between and within racial groups.

on ii), the alt-right acknowledges the empirical evidence that a wide range of human characteristics and abilities are normally distributed (i.e. on a bell curve), and that these bell curves, when broken down by race or sex, indicate that groups differ both by mean and by standard deviation. It obviously follows that no particular characteristic or ability can be attributed to all group members, though that does not of course prevent us from noting differences in group averages and distribution.

I disagree that racism has the deep roots you posit, though I would agree that all one has to do is open up Herodotus to see that men have long recognized a diversity in culture, customs, norms, practices, religions, etc. among the peoples of the earth….

I disagree with nothing much in this paragraph, but again, no-one claims that Africans or Norwegians are “naturally inferior” in some holistic fashion, even if one is on average less well-endowed than the other in some particular characteristic. Africans, on average, do not synthesize Vitamin D from sunlight as readily as Northern Europeans, so tend to be more prone to rickets when transported to northern climes, while Northern Europeans dropped dead in great numbers from tropical diseases while exploring Africa. Examples can be multiplied almost without limit.

As for our ancestors, it wasn’t my intention to label them as racist, but to point out that by liberalism’s (entirely absurd) standards, they held many beliefs that would have them so labelled today. I believe that in many of these beliefs, they were much more clear-eyed and realistic than we are today.

Is it because Europeans are “white” or is it because Europeans have been exposed to the truth of Christianity and its cultivation of classical learning and reason?

This is a very interesting question, and the subject of much debate on the alt-right. My position is that if we accept (as I do) that “characteristics and abilities” are distributed differently between different races, we would naturally expect to find many cultural expressions of those differences. For instance, we often hear hypotheses like this: Jews are disproportionately represented in the highest reaches of finance, academe, media and culture because Jewish culture emphasizes literacy, learning, and diligence. But you can very plausibly reverse this formulation: Jewish culture emphasizes learning, etc. because Ashkenazi Jews are, on average, one full standard deviation more intelligent than whites. In other words, their cultural mores are, in part, an expression of their genetic heritage, and their genetic posterity will, in turn, be influenced by the standards of success within their culture. Likewise, the chicken-egg question of the genesis of European civilization.

While it may not be appling to “all” members of a certain group, I think Vox Day’s assertions here likely fit into that “standard definition” of racism: “But wait a minute, let me back up though. That’s Ashkenazi Jewish intelligence. I went and did a little bit more homework and I ran the numbers and actually overall Jewish intelligence is not that spectacular. If you put all the … If you put the three populations together, Sephardic, Mizrahi and Ashkenazi, their average IQ is only 105.” http://heatst.com/world/antisemitism-and-the-alt-right-vox-day-debates-louise-mensch-part-2/

The Radix Journal, run by another “leader of the alt-right” has, again, maybe not this “textbook” definition of racism on display, but it is hardly something that the Catholic, or even Protestant, would want to jump on board with:
” First of all, the pro-life position is clearly dysgenic. A 2011 study showed that in 2008, while 16 percent of women aged 15-44 lived below the poverty line, among women who had abortions, the number was 42 percent. Hispanic and African-American women made up a combined 31 percent of this age group, but almost 55 percent of those who chose to terminate a pregnancy. The reasons behind these patterns aren’t hard to figure out. In a world with reliable birth control, it is quite easy to avoid an unwanted pregnancy; the only ones who can’t are the least intelligent and responsible members of society: women who are disproportionately Black, Hispanic, and poor. ” http://www.radixjournal.com/journal/2016/4/8/the-pro-life-temptation

If you put the three populations together, Sephardic, Mizrahi and Ashkenazi, their average IQ is only 105.,/i>

Correct, which is why I mentioned Ashkenazim specifically. Not sure about Mizrahi, but I understand that Sephardic Jews tend to be lower than the white average. I suspect that Ashkenazim are dragging the average up. As I say, these are averages: you can find both Ashkenazim of very low intelligence and Sephardics of very high intelligence. But the location and shape of a particular distribution (whether it is of intelligence, fast-twitch muscle fiber, or a host of personality traits) have very significant real-world manifestations, not the least of which are cultural.

Mind you, even a 5-point difference in average IQ has very large effects at the tails of the distribution, all else being equal.

Adoption studies are inconclusive, if not leaning slightly to nuture over nature, and the overall science is debatable and therefore moot on race and intelligence.

Far be it from me to suggest that Wikipedia might be other than perfectly objective, but adoption and twin studies strongly support the heritability of behavioral characteristics; that is, the adopted children tend to resemble their biological relatives far more closely than their adoptive family. Data not being the plural of anecdote and all that, but both my wife and I have adopted siblings who are nothing at all like other family members, differing strongly in interests, predisposition to impulsive behavior, sociability, aggression, and intelligence, among other things.

And for all that intelligence is a hot-button issue, it is one of the most well-studied factors in psychology. Researchers (most of them good liberal academics) have spent decades coming up with ever more refined and culturally neutral measures of g, only to find that they keep coming up with more or less the same distributions. (It turns out, for instance, that g is correlated strongly with reaction time, as measured by the interval required to identify which of two lines is the longer, etc.) Trillions of dollars have been spent over several decades on educational and social programs based on the ideological assertion of Human Neurological Uniformity, to conspicuously dismal results.

But why would we expect otherwise? Human beings vary wildly in physiognomy, skeletal structure, skin thickness, musculature, resistance or predisposition to disease, limb length, fat distribution, and so on, and these characteristics cluster within particular races–which are, after all, just very large extended families. By what mysterious X-factor should we expect the brain to be rendered immune to the same diversity?

On the Radix excerpt: do you disagree with the data cited or the conclusions drawn? I would tentatively agree that the ranks of women seeking an abortion are more likely to be drawn from those with low intelligence, high time preference, or a predisposition to impulsive behavior (all of which correlate quite strongly). I would further agree that should such women carry their children to term, it is quite likely that they will pass those (heritable) characteristics to them. Does this justify abortion on eugenic grounds? Absolutely not. So while I believe that his data are likely to be correct, I repudiate the conclusion he draws.

As I wrote in my initial comment, the alt-right covers a huge range of worldviews and proposed remedies, which is why it can’t be classed as an ideology simpliciter. We disagree on much, but are united in opposition to the lie of modernity.

Whether IQ is an effective test or measurement or not is, I think, inconsequential to the claim of “the alt-right is racist”. What Vox Day and the Radix Journal then do which pushes them into racism is argue that they either skirt the edges of or go into assigning to those qualities “better-ness” of white Euro-ness. The conclusion you repudiate from the Radix is precisely that racism of the alt-right.

Perhaps some positions of the general alt-right can be held be Catholics while remaining on good moral ground, but to borrow a phrase from Leah Libresco perhaps it is even simply prudent to avoid the term because it is “racist adjacent”? Why not, instead of identifying as alt-right, does someone sympathetic to some of the propositions state that they are a Catholic and as a Catholic believe or propose X, Y, Z positions?

Whether IQ is an effective test or measurement or not is, I think, inconsequential to the claim of “the alt-right is racist”.

Not at all. Much of the criticism of the alt-right relates to their contention that racial differences exist, and that intelligence is a particularly salient example of those differences. If this contention is true (and I believe it is) then a large chunk of the racist boo-word loses its force.

What Vox Day and the Radix Journal then do which pushes them into racism is argue that they either skirt the edges of or go into assigning to those qualities “better-ness” of white Euro-ness.

I have never seen Vox Day or Radix do this. They assert their preference to live in a culture dominated by people of European heritage, but go on to point out that this is no more than the natural desire of every culture on the planet. The Chinese wish to live among Chinese people, the Israelis among fellow Jews, and Afghans among Afghans. This seems to me to be a perfectly natural inclination.

15. The Alt Right does not believe in the general supremacy of any race, nation, people, or sub-species. Every race, nation, people, and human sub-species has its own unique strengths and weaknesses, and possesses the sovereign right to dwell unmolested in the native culture it prefers.

16. The Alt Right is a philosophy that values peace among the various nations of the world and opposes wars to impose the values of one nation upon another as well as efforts to exterminate individual nations through war, genocide, immigration, or genetic assimilation.

The conclusion you repudiate from the Radix is precisely that racism of the alt-right.

It’s a bad conclusion, but not a racist one, to my mind. Keep in mind that I am adhering to Gabriel’s definition of racism above: the belief that all members of each race possess characteristics or abilities specific to that race, especially so as to distinguish it as inferior or superior to another race or races. The excerpt you cited does not meet the criterion of assigning specific characteristics or abilities to all members of a race. It seems you are working with the liberal definition of “racism”, which is to say an amorphous, essentially meaningless shut-up word.

Going back and looking at the Vox Day debate and that specific post on Radix, yes, neither do have racism as used by Mr. Sanchez above, so I will concede that point. It still does not stop me from thinking the alt-right, as generally expressed, to be incompatible or at least problematic from a Catholic perspective for its elevation of nationalism and especially “race nationalism” over the universal call to the Church.

I didn’t intend to make racism into the liberal shut-up word, that was not my intention and going back with a more sober mind have found a lot of my words to be a lot of bloviation.

If your the praying sort, please pray for me–for sober and charitable thought and actions, and I will surely do likewise.

Yes, I, too, have read The Bell Curve (along with Murray’s later piece on Jewish intelligence for Commentary). But beyond that…

“On i), all races comprise human beings, and all human beings share the same broad characteristics and abilities, though distributed unevenly both between and within racial groups.”

You’re putting the cart before the horse here. How do you define a “race’? What distinguishing characteristics are sufficient enough to divide one group of people from another? Skin color? Eye color? Hair color and makeup? If “white” is a race, why are Jews excluded given that many have mixed with non-Semitic peoples over the centuries? Are Slavs “white”? But what about the fact that certain Slavic peoples now carry a lot of genes brought in from Middle Eastern/Semitic persons? Until you can formulate, with a fairly high degree of precision, a model for dividing up peoples between races, the concept remains porous, ambiguous, and bereft of utility.

“ii), the alt-right acknowledges the empirical evidence that a wide range of human characteristics and abilities are normally distributed (i.e. on a bell curve), and that these bell curves, when broken down by race or sex, indicate that groups differ both by mean and by standard deviation.”

Perhaps. However, depending on who you add/subtract as being eligible for a particular sample size, which characteristics are more or less pronounced in certain groups will vary considerably. In other words, you have to have a working model that allows for a clear distinction between races before such measurements can produce meaningful results.

However…

Even if meaningful results can be achieved, so what? Let us hypothesize that Clearly Defined Race A is more intelligent than Clearly Defined Race B, but that B exhibits greater physical strength and athletic prowess than A. What does that matter? How does that affect the moral equality of all persons categorized either as A or B? In which way should such an empirical reality (assuming it is a reality that can be discerned and verified with a high degree of confidence) direct policy, laws, institutions, national and supranational borders, etc.? Without trying to sound too “Humain,” how does this hypothetical “Is” yield any concrete “Ought”?

“My position is that if we accept (as I do) that “characteristics and abilities” are distributed differently between different races, we would naturally expect to find many cultural expressions of those differences.”

Again, even if this is true (and I will point you again to my comments on the race category above), what does that matter? We are not in a “state of nature”; we are not here to devise a politics rooted in the (false) idea that humanity is engaged in a “survival of the fittest.” We are beyond the days of local conventions; there is no turning back from the universal message of Christianity, nor do we have any right to create some “earthly paradise” (or, really, “earthly hell”) while awaiting the Second Coming. The key issue is not distinguishing between “races” but between those who have accepted the Gospel and those who have not. The latter are not our enemies per se; they are people in need of conversion. And for those peoples who continue to cling to false religions, be it Islam or some form of radical atheism, their errors are to be resisted; their attacks must be defended against; and, in the end, they must be shown the light of Truth. That is the mission of Christian civilization. That is the earthly end of Christendom. Our mandate from Christ is to baptize all peoples in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, not kick people out of our country for being the wrong color.

Well, this is getting very long. I’ll try to be brief, probably unsuccessfully. And ,i>this time I’ll double-check my italics tags!

I have read The Bell Curve–good guess!– but it doesn’t feature that heavily in my thinking.

How do you define a “race’? What distinguishing characteristics are sufficient enough to divide one group of people from another?

Race is both a social construct and a real biological phenomenon, which makes precise classification difficult, and everyone acknowledges that there is no bright line separating one race from another, except perhaps in the case of particularly isolated populations.

How do you define a breed of dog or sparrow, or cow? A “Labrador Retriever” is a social construct, as is a “Chihuahua”, but these labels also refer to specific canine phenotypes based on common descent or heredity, which are easily identifiable through DNA analysis. The existence of Labhuahuas in various proportions doesn’t nullify the existence of the (socially constructed yet biologically real) “purebred” phenotypes.

So too with humans. The great racial groupings (Australoid, Caucasoid, Mongoloid, and Negroid) blur into each other at the margins, but genetic analysis indicates large populations with little to no interbreeding, and these biological realities provide the empirical basis for the social categories we all employ. Within these large groups, we can identify genetic bases for perhaps hundreds of subgroups: Danes vs. Spaniards vs Slavs, for instance, or the notable physiological differences between East and West Africans.

Whites and Jews: I note that Jews themselves seem to be conflicted on the question, classifying themselves variably as “white” and “non-white” as the circumstances require. But from a genetic perspective, Jews are an inbred extended family with only minimal outbreeding, leaving them quite distinct from other European populations. They are also distinct in a cultural sense.

Even if meaningful results can be achieved, so what? Let us hypothesize that Clearly Defined Race A is more intelligent than Clearly Defined Race B, but that B exhibits greater physical strength and athletic prowess than A. What does that matter? How does that affect the moral equality of all persons categorized either as A or B? In which way should such an empirical reality (assuming it is a reality that can be discerned and verified with a high degree of confidence) direct policy, laws, institutions, national and supranational borders, etc.? Without trying to sound too “Humain,” how does this hypothetical “Is” yield any concrete “Ought”?

It matters a great deal in the realm of public policy. How do we care for the least among us? What are the best means to lift up the poor to a life of dignity, to help the unemployed find fitting work, to care for those least able to care for themselves? Liberalism has uniformly disastrous answers to all those questions, partly because it has a fervent religious attachment to the notion that all human beings are inherently fungible and of inherently equal capacity, leading liberals to conclude that differences of outcome must be the result of nefarious social forces: racism, sexism, capitalism, and so on.

But what if it’s not true? What if all the billions of dollars spent on “closing the gap” between white and non-white students have been wasted? (And they certainly have.) What if social programs originally designed for one population only trap another into an endless cycle of dependency, with all its attendant social ills? What if mass immigration and mandated racial integration only foment ethnic conflict and racial resentment? What if these and other liberal initiatives have been a gigantic wasteful diversion of resources that could have been put to productive use elsewhere? Of course it matters.

I agree wholeheartedly with your concluding paragraph, in its main thrust. I’m not positing or advocating for a “survival of the fittest” social model; to the contrary, I seek an orderly, God-fearing society in which each person is able to maximize his potential, whatever it might be. (I am likewise not seeking to kick people out for being the “wrong color”, though I do support the repatriation of illegal immigrants and Mohammedans of whatever race.) But we must seek and adhere to the truth, no matter how uncongenial it might be.

AHAugust 30, 2016

Hi,

As a practicing Christian (though non-Catholic,) and a member of the alt-right, I thought you might be interested in my take on this post.

> All of these various political “brands” of Catholicism have one essential thing in common: an unfettered willingness to replace doctrine with ideology. There is no small amount of irony on hand when various social-media forums explode with fights between “alt-right Catholics” and “socialist Catholics.”

Couldn’t agree more. You can’t be a [____] Christian; you have to be Christian first and whatever else a distant and contingent second. To the extent that “alt-right Catholics” are interpreting their Catholicism through an alt-right lens, they’re making a grave mistake and should immediately quit and repent.

> Racism is not Catholic. Excessive anti-immigration policies are not Catholic. Nationalism, to the extent the nation is placed above God and His Church, is not Catholic.

Agree with these also, but I don’t think they do the work you need them to do. I don’t know what you intend “excessive” to mean in “excessive anti-immigration policies,” but America is about 11.6% immigrants (37 million out of 319 million,) and obviously some larger percentage must be made up of such immigrants plus their recent descendants. It’s far from obvious that this level of immigration is not itself “excessive,” particularly considering that an awful lot of it is illegal immigration and chain migration, systems of population transfer that current Americans don’t get to vote on.

Obviously, we cannot tolerate racially motivated violence, nor abuses perhaps not rising to the level of violence but nonetheless unacceptable in a purportedly civilized society. To the extent that race colors police interaction with minorities, or provision of credit, or employability, etc., we should be vigilant to prevent abuses or punish them once they arise. I don’t think anyone seriously questions this, other than insane people like Heimbach who are a fringe of a fringe of a fringe of a fringe.

Even he seems to prefer provoking people in order to “defend” himself with excessive force over going around attacking people, and no wonder: if he were to do the latter, he would find himself in jail for a very long time, which tells us how much society tolerates his views. But there’s a certain value to the left in having Heimbach et al. around: it allows them to suggest that the 35-50% of Americans (depending on the poll and the day) willing to vote Trump are so many million Heimbachs, and that’s just untrue.

But that’s one system of racism, and there are at least two systems of racism in the present-day USA. The other one is the anti-white beliefs that have been current for generations in academia. (They’re usually focused on prole and hick whites, which is telling, because those are actually one major white demographic that tends to vote Democratic and to intermarry with blacks and Hispanics—it’s much more about class hatred than about the actual beliefs and actions of downscale whites.) You and I have both attended top schools and I’m sure that you can fill in the blanks on this one. A major motivator for alt-right sentiment is the demand that one disbelieve in this, when five minutes in a college humanities class makes clear not merely that anti-certain-kinds-of-whiteness in academia and government exists but that they it is a motivating passion for people on the road to power.

Moreover, you don’t have to be a racist to believe that a certain amount of homogeneity and national feeling is necessary for national existence. Hostility to national feeling is a dangerous kind of liberalism and it’s in power all over the world, while the alt-right is in power in… I don’t know, a few comboxes? Anti-nationalism is a strange marriage of the cheap-labor lobby and the irrational anti-white passion of the globalist elite. (One thinks of VP Biden’s remarks about “a constant, unrelenting stream” of immigrants being necessary for “economic growth”—hard to see what’s particularly Catholic about that.)

> [L]iberalism has no authentic place for Christ and His Church

I’m sure that you realize that this puts you in the thankless position of opening yourself to the same attacks from the left that we alt-righters put up with without even getting you an alt-right hugbox in return. Kudos for your courage and thanks for letting me write this long comment.

“It’s far from obvious that this level of immigration is not itself “excessive,” particularly considering that an awful lot of it is illegal immigration and chain migration, systems of population transfer that current Americans don’t get to vote on.”

My point has nothing to do with the current immigration policies of the U.S. Rather, it is a rebuke to the absolutist/near-absolutist anti-immigration/refugee policies touted by the alt-right movement. As I have discussed before on this web-log, no country is morally obligated to provide open-door immigration or, for that matter, to treat non-citizens the same as citizens (this is particularly true for refugees). However, the “close the borders!” mentality does not pass muster either. I am all for the U.S. (and every other country) having prudent and defensible immigration and refugee policies. The ones I have seen being promoted by the alt-right do not measure up, however.

“[various comments on race and racism]”

My rejection of racism — which I take to be the Church’s rejection of racism as well — concerns “the belief that all members of each race possess characteristics or abilities specific to that race, especially so as to distinguish it as inferior or superior to another race or races” (standard dictionary definition). That people have taken up the ideology of race and racism is beyond dispute. I also will not dispute that the Left has created narratives, caricatures, and justifications intended to limit discourse, obscure history, replace theory with ideology, and so forth. Whether any of this was “racially motivated” or not is secondary to the destructive effect it has had on American intellectual, political, and social life. I am not entirely convinced that the ideology touted by the Left, particularly in academia, is motivated so much but “anti-white” animus as much as it wishes to clear away Christendom, which includes much of the classical learning which Christian civilization appropriated and expanded upon in the first millennium after Christ.

“Moreover, you don’t have to be a racist to believe that a certain amount of homogeneity and national feeling is necessary for national existence.”

On this I agree, which is why I support — for lack of a better term — a “Christian nationalism” predicated upon the teachings of the Church and the recognition of Christ’s social reign, without regard to race, ethnicity, historic national origin, etc. Obviously, this concept is not as easy to visualize in the U.S., which has no real history of being united around a single confession or creed. My loose model for this is the Christian nationalism which was built up in Galicia (Ukraine) in the 19th and 20th centuries with the cooperation of the Church as a moral and spiritual support for civil society. Now, of course, there are lessons to be learned from this experience, such as the tendency for nationalism and national identity to overtake Christian identity; that is always a temptation that has to be guarded against. What ultimately unites people — all peoples — is that we are the children of God, regardless of cosmetic differences and historical accidents. Any ideology which obscures this truth, either intentionally or not, is unacceptable.

“I’m sure that you realize that this puts you in the thankless position of opening yourself to the same attacks from the left that we alt-righters put up with without even getting you an alt-right hugbox in return.”

Well, sometimes the thankless position is the only position available.

Thank you for your thoughtful comment. Feel free to write more. I am always interested in intelligent debate and commentary.